Foods that Ruin Your Dental Health

How many of us look forward to our six monthly meetings with the dentist? How about if we call them rendezvous? Or how about dental dates? Jokes apart no matter what we call it seeing our dentist is the last thing we would ask for. But don’t you think meeting your dentist for your bi-annual dental check-ups is anytime better than cowering in the dental chair and murmuring psalm 23? Yes, anytime we reckon. That was that. We now move on to the topic under discussion.

What are the foods that ruin your dental health? We learned in the last blog post that sugar is no friend of your teeth, and how it triggers a set of changes that are not favorable to our oral health. We also know that candies, lollies, twee coffees, sweetened drinks, chocolates, and moreish sweets are the bad guys and must be given a wide berth to. But there are other kinds of foods that we consume everyday thinking that they are absolutely innocuous and healthy but are in fact a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

How do legumes, grains, seeds, and nuts make you feel? Well, you may have found it a little difficult while you were growing up to habituate yourself to eat them but you eventually reconciled yourself. You were told that grains, legumes, and nuts are good for your health and better even as they can be used in place of red and processed meat to fulfill your protein requirement. That’s cool, isn’t it? But what if we told you that these torchbearers of plant based diet are in some stealthy way responsible for tooth decay? WHAT? Really? But how? Here’s how –

Phytic acid is a compound found in plants and while it is a good nutrient for them as it helps them stock phosphorus for cell division and formation of new tissues. However, when it comes to us humans, phytic acid doesn’t carry the same sentiment. When we consume seeds, legumes, and other parts of plants in the name of healthy food, the phytic acid that’s present in them depletes our body’s phosphorus levels. Furthermore, it binds with the essential minerals like magnesium, calcium, zinc, etc., turns them into phytates, and prevents our body from absorbing necessary nutrients from the food we eat. Oh boy! What bad we ever did to this phytic acid?

The phytic acid isn’t the only nemesis of phosphorus, glucose too, is known to lower phosphorus levels in our blood, which directly disrupts the dentinal fluid flow and leads to tooth decay. So we are not giving 64 million dollars to anyone who guesses that intake of sugar dense food items should be controlled.

Before closing, we’d again like to focus the spotlight on brushing your teeth, flossing them, and being sensible about your oral hygiene by not avoiding visiting the dental clinic.

Welcome to Dental Sphere, a state of the art dental clinic in Pune, where we provide full spectrum of multi-specialty dental care and expertise for patients through extensive treatment procedures. Since 2001, we’re satisfactorily serving patients from Routine Dental Care, Child Dental Care, Orthodontic Treatment, Smile Makeovers, Root Canals and Dental Implants. Our ideology is to create a welcoming, relaxing environment where your family can look forward to each visit with us.